I am trying to spec out a server to purchase (physically, not rented from someone like softlayer.com) to run an intranet instace of Flash Media Server 3.5 Interactive. In general, the server will likely be fielding somewhere on the order of 400 connections at a time at the upper limit. Of course, should this increase, we don't want to be stuck. While the decision is not final, we will likely be running the server on Red Hat rather than Windows.

The server will be run on gigabit ethernet.

I have two related questions:
What sort of hardware would I need realistically to support this?
What advice can you offer for settings in tuning FMS/the OS to be performant to this level?

We are looking for a bare minimum that will run this effectively to save on costs. Realistically, the average number of connections will be fairly low (50-150) by comparison with that upper limit estimate. To reiterate: we just want to be cautious in not getting caught when we need more power, but we also need a low-cost solution (doesn't everyone?) and that may take priority.

Windows and RedHat are the two officially supported operating systems. Since FMS is stated to be 32-bit only, I'm sticking with a 32-bit OS. The hardware requirements listed by Adobe on their website are:

• 3.2GHz Intel® Pentium® 4 processor (dual Intel Xeon® or faster recommended)
• 2GB of RAM (4GB recommended)
• 1Gb Ethernet card

So what realistically do I need for those sorts of connection numbers, and what can I due to tune things up to get more out of less hardware?

Thanks!